When this post goes up, there will only be a few more days before the next Final Fantasy 14 patch. This will be the first one where I’m actually IN the parts of the game impacted by the patch. I’ve got my crafters all set for the new gear, I’ve got almost all of the main scenario quests done, and I’m just going through the last steps of completing stockpiles, acquiring supplies, and making sure I have everything ready that I can possibly think of. I have no idea what to expect and while I’m sure I could ask people for the information I need to know it all, I kind of want to go in without knowing. I want to experience the bleeding edge of it all. I want to chart my own path through unknown territory. I want to be driven into the systems of the game because none of the outside resources have the answers yet. I want to experience what it’s like to not know something along with a whole bunch of other people who also don’t know. I want to experience a massive game and the way the world of players within it shift to respond to changes. It’s possible I’m building up anticipation for something that will be ultimately disappointing. It’s possible nothing I imagine will come to pass and it will just be another Tuesday marked by the ability to more freely glamour everyone’s gear (using off-job gear now). I have no idea what to expect and I’m very invested in finding out what it will be, roses and thorns together.

My little collective of eager crafters and players has remained at just three so far [it has now expanded to 6!]. I’m going to put out another call for other players who might be interested, but I suspect that most are content to merely wait for the market to calm down, for prices to drop, and for the arrival of the higher-difficult versions of the raids to prompt them to acquire gear [some of them might have just needed more reminders and their attention called to channels in our discord that they normally ignore]. Not everyone is as excited at the idea of spreadsheets, collaboration, and doing something for the newness of it all as I am. Most of them also have had a significant part of the year to acquire the best possible gear currently available and so will be at less of a disadvantage when it comes to the stuff that will be made available in the patch. I wish a few more people were interested in my collective crafting consortium, but I’m glad I’ve got at least two others. I also hope that I’m not too over-prepared. It would stink to have stockpiled a bunch of stuff that won’t be useful at all. I mean, I’m sure I’ll find uses for all of it eventually, but it would stink to have put in all this effort to prepare only for all of it to go to waste. Past crafting expansions (from this expansion and previous ones) have led me to believe that some of the previously useful materials will still be needed for the new gear, but it’s entirely possible that this is a baseless assumption made as a result of too little data. I’ve never done any of this before and everyone I asked general questions about seemed intent on telling me that it would be better to just wait for the prices to drop. Which, again, isn’t the reason I’m doing any of this at all.

I’m finishing this post a week before the patch goes live, at the start of the final weekly refresh before it. I’ve lost quite a few days of potential planning and work to being sick and just not having the focus for it, but I’ve now put out my call for additional interested parties and will begin to work on my spreadsheet as soon as every other more-urgent thing has been taken care of. There’s more to do now than ever and I’m starting to feel the pressure a bit more than I’d like, but part of that is because I’ve still got a bit of post-cold brain fog going on. Once that clears up and I start busting down my list of things that need doing, the pressure will hopefully fade until it’s only the pressure I’ve assigned myself rather than all that PLUS all the responsibilities I’ve been shirking as a result of being sick (more on that next week, though). I feel incredibly anxious about this, partly because I feel so unprepared and partly because it feels like everything else I had on the backburner has begun to boil at the same time. This next year will be an interesting one, to be sure. Interesting and probably quite busy. Mostly in Final Fantasy 14. Which should be fine since I’ll actually be current this time around and will have an extensive part of this patch where I’m just doing maintenance stuff. Hopefully. Who knows? It’s difficult to predict because everything just feels so overwhelming right now.

But this is why I prepare. This is why I organize. With enough time, enough lists, and a clear head, things will start to look better. I can definitely do the first two things, but I’m kinda dependent on my exhausted body healing up in order to manage the third. Working as much as possible at my day job and filling my evenings with preparations and extra game labor probably aren’t going to help me in that regard… I keep hoping I wake up feeling remarkably better and it keeps not happening, so who knows if I’ll manage to get a handle on things in time enough to feel prepared and not feeling increidbly overwhelmed. Only time will tell and, unfortunately, I’m writing this a few days ahead of when it will get posted and I don’t know yet! I probably won’t even know until after this goes up, given that it will still take a couple days post-clarity or most of a week without clarity to wrangle everything, which is truly unfortunate [so far, editing this the day before it posts, I’ve been feeling a little better every day but am still too fogged up to focus short of herculean efforts, which are probably what is slowing my recovery down since I keep forcing myself to focus]. At least most of this stuff doesn’t really matter outside of the importance I assign it. I just… I’ve spent a lot of the last few years giving up on things that were important to me due to burnout, the vagaries of life, and isolation, so I’d really like to avoid doing that again, even for something as trivial as crafting a bunch of gear in a video game.